Pages

Monday, 26 November 2012

Christened With Crosses by Eduard Kochergin (A Review)

Blurb:

Christened with Crosses is the unforgettable story of a young boy’s dangerous, adventure-filled westbound journey along the railways of postwar Russia. Based on a true story of Kochergin’s
amazing life, this book depicts the awakening of artistic talent under
highly unusual Russian circumstances. It is the memoir of an old man
who, as a boy, learnt to find his way between extortionate state control
and marauding banditry, the two poles that characterize Russia to this
day.

Orphaned when his parents are taken away as “enemies of the
people”, young Stepanych finds himself a ward of the Soviet state. He
is miraculously rescued from a government orphanage in Nazi-besieged Leningrad, only to be placed in another children’s institution in Siberia—a
place of Dickensian attributes, where the leaders earn nicknames like
Toad and Screwface, and where the young inmates are able to live their
own lives only in secret, by night. Desperately longing for his native
city and his Polish mother, Bronya, Stepanych flees the orphanage soon
after the end of World War II.

The eight year old boy secretly
jumps on board the trains heading west, towards Leningrad. It is not
only his desperate courage and his youthful agility that ensure his
survival, it is also his artistic talent. With his agile fingers the boy
is able to bend wire in the shape of profiles of Lenin and Stalin, as
if in silhouette. He uses them to cheer up the invalid war veterans on
the train stations returning from the front, who then give him a piece
of bread, a bowl of soup and who, in a spirit of comradeship, warn him
of the railway police and the secret service henchmen wanting to send
the runaway back to the orphanage. Eduard spends more than six years on
the run, experiencing close encounters with post-war Russia where life and fate have become synonyms.

*The book’s title Christened with Crosses
comes from the old prison slang. The phrase used to be a password among
convicts in the most famous Russian prisons otherwise known as
‘crosses’ were political detainees were sent to cells with hard core
thieves.

This tale of Kochergin's life truly is amazing! Action-packed, it is full of tension and drama. The events are well-described, as are the places that the reader journeys through along with our narrator.

It is often hard to believe that this really happened to anyone! The world which we find ourselves emersed in is so different from that of the western world in which most of us live. Its hard to imagine living in such a situation.

Throughout the difficult times, this book tells of hope and determination. It has the potential to give hope to even the most lost, and is truly educational in its own right.

Those more familiar with dyspotian novels will be surprised how familiar this story seems, whilst readers of travel logs will be interested by the variety of places mentioned. Anyone who enjoys stories about individuals and human interactions will find much to fascinate. I truly recommend this book and hope any who try it will enjoy it as much as I have.